Obama, mama

I voted for the first time in 1982 and then and every time since I could feel the breath of my Black ancestors on my neck, those that fought and died for the right. I could also feel the warmth of all of the men and women who fought for the right for women to vote, and all of the multi-colored South Africans who had recently gained this liberty, and all the folks who got a chance because of sacrifice, determination, and absolute belief in equality and freedom, to pull the lever or blacken the dot.

I think of my parents who gained the right to vote in their lifetime--something we take for granted, now, they weren't able to do for the first 1/3 of their lives. Can you imagine? I think of all of the powerful women I know who's grandmothers couldn't do it--didn't have the right to choose what they wanted and believed in. And I think of the disaffected youth and the rest of those that have the ability but don't think it's worth it. How can it not be worth it when so many people gave their lives for it?

A few years ago on the day I had pneumonia but I went and did it anyway. I'm no hero or martyr--I bought a bar of chocolate that day, too, risking more illness by going to the grocery store--and it was during "hanging chad" time, an extraordinarily scary time all around, but damn if it wasn't worth it--someone was elected that day whom I still believe in who's gone on to higher office and made a world of difference to the community in which I lived at the time.

Corny shit is often true, ain't it?

TODAY, I Cried


Today, I cried.....I voted for a black man and, I cried.

I cried for my father and my grandfather and all grandfathers before him.
I cried for my uncles, my four brothers, my seventeen nephews, my two sons,
my six grandsons and one great-grand son.
I cried for the black men I have loved and those that have loved me.

I cried for the millions of little black boys (not forgetting the girls)
over the centuries that did not, in their wildest dreams, imagine...that
they could run for Office. I cried for their despair...I cried for all the men
and boys incarcerated that lost hope in themselves and took the low road.
I cried, I cried and I cried..

I know that this was 'just the primary.' But whatever the end
result may be, today I voted in the United States of America
for a black man, and .. I cried.
If I should die before the presidential election it will be OK,
Because today I voted. I voted for a black man and I cried.

Author Unknown,

Adventures in ci home edition

When you are sick in bed over a period of time your life becomes a tiny pinprick in the volumulous sheet of life. You can't do your normal activities, you don't see your friends that often, the amount of energy required to take care of basic needs is all you can muster and sometimes not even that. This latest flare has been mostly pain and swelling and dizziness, so the little oasis around my bed has become my home with achingly difficult trips down the stairs to the bathroom as little as possible. My drugs and ungents and supplements are lined up next to a large bottle of spring water, my magazines (Vanity Fair and the New Yorker and Oprah and Nutrition Action) are piled high on the right side while books by Hening Mankel, P.D. James and Guy Paget are piled high on the left side. When it snows, I can witness it out of my little garret window under which I sleep--I especially like the swirling kind--it's like being in a snow globe. At the foot of my island is my clock radio for many hours of NPR (thankfully election obsession has replaced "All Iraq, all the time") and my groovy Apple powerbook sits on one of my pillows, it's low growl a nighttime lullaby. I can monitor work email and write procedurals for my job without moving too much and research which ream of pre-hole punch paper will cost the least, per case. There is a box of CVS wheat crackers for nausea and pill popping, some minty gum in case I meet someone to kiss in my dreams and a few chocolate kisses to quell my cacao addiction.

I can hear the Arlington Catholic high school kids in the morning as their parents drop them off--a symphony of closing car doors--and when they are dismissed for the day at 2:30p--dancing voices in all candences, all excited and bright. On Tuesdays the person who plays the bells at St. Agnes practices at noontime and I swear I can hear selections from "The Who" among the hymns that ring out over the municipal parking lot.

I have a container of shea body butter, two Glade scented candles (in fresh linen), and a picture of my mom and brother on the window sill. There's also a dead fly that Poopy must have killed a while ago laying between the window and the screen, but I don't have the heart to fish it out.

I keep the room cool and use a soft light bulb in my Walmart halogen lamp to create a cozy ambiance. On the other side of the room is a seasonal affectiveness disorder lamp that I turn on for 30-40 minutes a day aimed straight up at the ceiling for that beach effect. The white light streams into every corner of the room, often allowing me to locate stray socks and lost earrings.

I can see my cell phone across the room where I flung it after being on hold with Social Security for 30 minutes this afternoon. I can also see an old toolbox that I inherited in one of my old used cars--the friend who sold it to me gave me a toy gun to brandish in case I was ever accosted. Maybe I'll use it down at the Social Security office but it may dilute the merits of my case.

On a shelf are a giant bottle of lemon flavored cod liver oil capsules (watch out for those fish burps!), a pink marble pig I brought home from Ireland and Poopy's ashes in a cherry wood box. There's a small, brightly colored rug on the floor in front of the closet and on it is a stuffed puppy--a labrador, which some healer recommended I get.

If I lay in one spot on the bed I can see the other little garret window in the other room where the sun comes in in the morning and through which I can hear the smaller children playing in the alley in the afternoon. The lucious orders of fresh Indian food waft over from the Punjab restaurant and the lilting voices of the young waiters can be heard as they take their cigarette breaks.

Many a battle has been fought from my perch above the municipal parking lot, and the current battle with the disability people is being waged from my sealy posturpedic, which is covered in a bright white sheet with yellow circles that mom got from Ikea. My pillow cases are a deep matte red and my duvet is a hypoallergenic, psuedo down concoction in quilted fucshia. When the chills come I wrap myself in it like I'm pita filling, tucking in the edges and when the fevers rise I spread it out and lay on top of it right under the window.

There's a beautiful purple leather pouch hanging on the wall, embossed with a picture of the african continent and a strangely placed scone light fixture right next to the door.

It's an odd place in which to dwell, my cell, my comfortable chamber, my petite gaol, a place to imagine the possibilities of being fully healthy again, a place to mourn what's been lost, a place to hope for healing sleep, a place to feel safe, a place to feel apart. No mirrors to reflect the misery, no mirrors to refract the light--let it stream in fully.

Toni Morrison endorses Obama

I love her verbiage.

Morrison Endorses Obama for President

By NEDRA PICKLER,

AP

Posted: 2008-01-28 12:39:32

WASHINGTON (AP) - The woman who famously labeled Bill Clinton as the "first black president" is backing Barack Obama to be the second.

Author Toni Morrison said her endorsement of the Democratic presidential candidate has little to do with Obama's race - he is the son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas - but rather his personal gifts.

Writing with the touch of a poet in a letter to the Illinois senator, Morrison explained why she chose Obama over Hillary Rodham Clinton for her first public presidential endorsement.

Morrison, whose acclaimed novels usually concentrate on the lives of black women, said she has admired Clinton for years because of her knowledge and mastery of politics, but then dismissed that experience in favor of Obama's vision.

"In addition to keen intelligence, integrity and a rare authenticity, you exhibit something that has nothing to do with age, experience, race or gender and something I don't see in other candidates," Morrison wrote. "That something is a creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom. It is too bad if we associate it only with gray hair and old age. Or if we call searing vision naivete. Or if we believe cunning is insight. Or if we settle for finessing cures tailored for each ravaged tree in the forest while ignoring the poisonous landscape that feeds and surrounds it.

"Wisdom is a gift; you can't train for it, inherit it, learn it in a class, or earn it in the workplace - that access can foster the acquisition of knowledge, but not wisdom," Morrison wrote.

In 1998, Morrison wrote a column for the New Yorker magazine in which she wrote of Bill Clinton: "White skin notwithstanding, this is our first black president. Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children's lifetime. After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas."

Obama responded to Morrison's endorsement with a written statement: "Toni Morrison has touched a nation with the grace and beauty of her words, and I was deeply moved and honored by the letter she wrote and the support she is giving our campaign."

synthesis

I read (In Oprah's magazine, the font of all wisdom) a quote about complaining--that what you find to complain about in others is usually something you don't like in yourself. Hmmmm. Recent events have me considering my own indulgence in rage, in misdirection, in lack of compassion. There's something in there about energy management, self-knowledge, and finding ways to cull self-knowledge, to tease out the threads of who you are what you are really reacting to as you walk the complicated footpath we call life.

I'm mad at several people, but mostly God. I know the reasons that I'm mad at these people are where I'll find the learning I need, something essential to the growth and healing of my psyche. What a wonderful knowledge that is, what a massive realization, first, because it let's me know that I'm not really mad at these people (all of whom are so dear to me), but that I'm mad at the limitations of what is only human in them and in me. Mostly in me. I don't have a clue how to 'fix" these situations, other than to keep looking at them, talking about them in therapy, and being completely honest about my feelings, motivations and what I'm uncovering. That old saw about only being able to control oneself and one's behavior applies here. What can you do? What can't you do? You can do anything. That's where my anger at God comes in.

Because I know him/her/it/gaseous essense/undulating life force. And I know in it, all is possible--harmony, union, publication, rash free ass, peace, affordable dental insurance, a Black man in the White House, personal happiness and abundance, an end to offensive body odor and the ability to meet people/myself where we are and to decide what we will or will not indulge in or put up with. And my suffering is the inability to accept all these things (and more) are true for me.

wwwwoooooo, deep huh? Simple. And yet so hard to live.


And so on this day that we honor a man who could see all of this and more, who had faith that people could move from one place to another no matter how improbable it seemed at the time, I would like to apologize to myself and those I've been salty with. I feel great remorse for what I've put you through, and I am sorry for what I've been doing to myself. Maybe, just maybe, we can build something better between us or maybe it's too late or unrealistic for us to do so. But here's what I know--I intend to keep working on a better me, someone compassionate, understanding, and passionate, who acts out of what I know to be true.

(If you'd like to donate to the "therapy for Jo" fund, give me a buzz.)

This includes putting up the barriers I need to erect to define the kind of life I really want to live. That might mean that certain behaviors are no longer conducive to the kind of atmosphere I want to nurture. I think I'll get better at letting you know that as I progress.

And I know it's not about all work, because many of these revelations come to me in moments of joy when I'm paying no attention. The viligance of thinking that I have to continually concentrate on this stuff is exhausting anyway. I can look at the sea and see the infinity, the reach and the scope of what is possible. I can watch someone laugh and know why all is beautiful. I can hear my neighbor singing "Nessun Dorma" in a key not found in the human vocal range and experience perfection.

Now I'm sleepy, and achy, and I have to go to the bathroom. How wondrous is this life!

Cold Comfort

There's a funny movie called "Cold Comfort Farm" where an old, tyrannical granny keeps a-hold of her family, keeps them chained to the farm, by having "turns" and repeating ominously that she "saw something nasty in the woodshed," when she was a child. That's kind of how I'm feeling when the people I haven't seen for a while ask how I've been and I say "my cat died." Don't expect much from me, don't expect much interest, or smiling, or even daily hair combing. I saw something nasty in the woodshed. My kitty died and my grief shall control everything, erecting a force field around me that means don't bother me and don't expect the best in grooming. Don't expect me to squeal with delight over your engagement, or congratulate you on your new part in the play, or to exclaim over your new bedroom furniture, or to drool over a good meal. Nothing can touch my soul, everything tastes like sand, the days are dark, the nights are endless, my clothes sadly furless, my bed cold. Little, moth-eaten fake mousies litter the floor, and I'm becoming Ms. Havesham from "Great Expectations," stuck on the day that she died, litter box untouched, cat food cans stacked in the cupboard, the last scrapings from her scratching post laying on the floor in a pool of catnip that she rolled around in on our last day together. The water in her water dish has evaporated in the skin-cracking heat of my apartment but I dare not move it.

People have said "it's just like losing a person." I haven't lost many people, bless buddha, but if they mean that there's a screaming void where your heart used to be and you hate God for a while, that there's the relief from your grievee's suffering, that the slightest thing brings you to tears, then it is like that. My little unconditional love, puddle of fur, goofy, proud, chatty, Poopy Pie, my little Pickles, Woman, Recalcitrant, Gramma, Poopilicious, Little Diva--too much to inscribe on a headstone at the Happy Acres Pet Memorial.

And its also so hilarious. I got the bill from the vets who she was last with, $1,000---but euthanasia only costs $75. I was on my way to acupuncture when I opened it and saw that, and so was crying when I arrived at my appointment. Anthony, my dear needle dude, had me lay down, and put needles in my arms feet and one in the middle of my forehead--the third eye, my favorite point--and then he lowered the lights and I let the tears roll down my face and into my sideburns. Then it struck me--I'm laying there with a needle sticking straight out of my forehead, weeping like a baby. And my feet stank. At that moment I could feel Poopy's cold nose on my face, something she'd often do when I cried or was laying down in pain as if to say, "I'm here. Hmmm...what's this salty stuff? You right, girlfriend, your feet are rank!" And I had to laugh and chortle and snort.

I try really hard to resent other people's animal stories, but it's too hard. Their babies are so cute and they are so proud/mock angry/happy about their antics. And who else can understand that unspoken bond?

My co-workers and I have a ritual in the afternoon when the office turns into an oven where we go around and give each other one or two complaints each. The other day we went around the room, and K said he had to re-print a bunch of letters, and E said that she was too full from lunch, and A said that her shoes were pinching her feet, and D said the heat in the office was horrible, and I said "my cat is dead." And then we laughed for twenty minutes, that great release of energy, that lovely, soul cleansing, tear producing, howling that comes from the belly.

And so, like everything, there is a barrel full of the absurd.

I know one thing, I'm SICK of listening to NPR--it's as negative and war-driven as Fox News sometimes, bleak, bleak, bleak, presidential candidates ad infinitum, and even Terry Gross of "Fresh Air" is interviewing pundits. C'mon! I want a funky, funny interview with Bonnie Raitt, or a story about children learning to play cellos, or a Sarah Vowell piece on having to spend the night in the Cincinnati airport. Bush's ridiculous gallivanting through the middle east touting democracy--you must be out of your mind--democracy in countries where women aren't allowed to vote or show their ankles? A peace agreement between groups that will not stop tit-for-tat bombing? WILL NOT STOP. The silly, silly man doesn't know what to do with himself. Don't think, George, that the "legacy" room at that great monolithic building (built in the shape of a lasso) you'll build in Crawford, Texas, the Shrub Museum (no library cuz you never read a book in your life--maybe a comic book collection), will contain the pen you signed a peace accord with, or a copy of the document signaling lasting peace between the Israelis or Palestinians or even pictures of all the American children you helped through your domestic policies. I'll tell you what it should contain--an old FEMA trailer, rank with formaldehyde, the empty shoes of a child who died in this country because she was uninsured, a sculpture made with the 4000+ helmets of the soldiers who died in Iraq, a replica of a rodent infested room from the Bethesda Medical Center where they treat injured troops, the stuffed carcass of Jerry Falwell, Dick Cheney's first artificial heart, the gun he shot that dude in the face with and the scotch glass he was holding when he did it, a crayon drawing of your tiny brain (complete with both sprockets and the rubber band), and a blackboard covered with your scrawl, 1000 times having to write "Iran poses no threat to the United States." jerk.

Can I digress or what?

fly across the curve of the earth
past the sun
faster than wind
on a point of light
to an unfixed destination
a place with no location
an abyss
full of sunlight
a black hole of moon glow
an edgeless universe

paws

Pet Bereavement websites---Bobby the ferret, Merl cat, Davey dog--pictures and remembrances. The sites I've read all advise that the bereaved shouldn't mitigate their grief based on the differing reactions they get from people. "Some people won't understand the special intimacy you shared with your pet--the unconditional love your pet gave you. Your pet may have been like a child to you." I mistakenly thought I was too cool for that not so long ago, but now the site of a little furry mite tugs at my heart. Not rats, mind you. Yuck.

Listening to NPR all day today as Poopy pads across my mind, not like a wraith, but a very strong memory, or maybe a vision, a familiar orange reflection. There was a doctor on who was a pioneer in alternative healing modalities and the treatment of the whole person and not just their physical maladies. She said that those "on the edge of life" could become healers, teachers of what it is to live a full life. I realize that feeling grief is fundamentally different than depression, which is kind of an absence of feeling, or just a prevailing despair, where as grief is more a deep well of emotion, and fear, and anger, and howling--but feeling to every nerve end. There is something quite pure about it. It has a realism where depression just has masks. I feel very clear in my grieving. I know why it's happening, I know that it has to run it's course, I know that it will ebb and flow, I know that I have to be gentle with it.

So the little box came--some sort of cherry-colored wood with a little lock and key--two keys--now who would I give a key to? I can't believe that Poopy is in there. I don't have any regrets about how she died other than the fact that I wasn't there, but the fundamental question is where did "she" go? Whatever she is now? I have such a strong sense of her, so I know that that essence is still here, wherever "here" is. I have a vague belief in the spiritual, other lives, other selves, and I know she's not in the little cherry-colored box--though I like to pet it--the wood is very smooth--and I have the sense of another place. I've had this sense before--people have come to me, especially Inez, best friend of my grandmother, who approaches me in dreams just as I saw her once in the Kmart parking lot. She tells me things, helpful things, in her no-nonsense, way, with her familiar nasal voice---vivid visions. Nothing frightening to me. Maybe the key is in the listening. Maybe I'm straining with all my strength to hear Poopy, to see her, since it's so hard to take in that she ain't here anymore.

But it's more poetic, don't you think, more spiritually comforting to believe that she's walking with me now, her right paw flexed as she waits for me to catch up, "C'mon, woman," she seems to be saying.

My hilarious Momm said that she doesn't want any urns with "cremains" around because she'd be too curious, wanting to open them up to see the contents. Unto dust, eh? I have no such compunction.

One day I'll pick up her toys, and her waterfall water bowl, and her food bowl and her brush and all the cans of cat food, and her toothbrush and her blanket and her heating pad, and her glamour-puss kitty carrier, and her high blood pressure pills, and her catnip and her scratch pad and her litter box, and her nail clippers, and the beige jacket she liked to lie on, and the stash of q-tips she collected in the moving box she liked to hide in, and the moving box, and I'll throw them away. I'll keep one of the fake mice, one of the ones that still has ears and a tail, to keep with the cherry-colored box. I'll ask some of my friends to come by and do a ritual, a little remembering.
but not today or tomorrow or
this week or
next.